


Don't Bug Me

by asmodesgold



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 10:20:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9119341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asmodesgold/pseuds/asmodesgold
Summary: Barba has always been afraid of bugs.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to my awesome beta booyahkendell!

Rafael Barba wasn't a man easily cowed. 

 

As a successful ADA, he had to endure almost-daily death threats and attempted assaults - from common criminals to cops themselves - and as a kid, he’d had to claw his way through a violent 1980’s Bronx to attend a grueling Harvard Law program that led him to said ADA job. No, Rafael Barba was not easily unnerved by anything…

 

...Anything except insects and arachnids.

 

He’d spent his forty years on Earth mostly alone, so he’d developed coping habits in order to stay self sufficient: he kept a fly swatter in every room in his house and his office, ones that could be extended, and when he killed something, he would scoop it up with the fly swatter and a piece of paper, then immediately sanitize the area containing the remaining guts. 

 

He'd once purchased a small handheld, cordless vacuum advertised exclusively for such pest extermination, but he quickly discovered that you had to leave the bug in there long enough to die, and by that point there'd be another bug to sweep up, and eventually he'd be dumping an entire canister of disgusting little corpses - that had only had to happen once for him to decide to donate it.

 

Whatever the murder method, Barba always kept a careful facade of indifference. Showing fear gave others a weakness to target, and while most people would only take it as far as teasing, he didn’t want to wake up to worms in his bed, spiders in his car, and roaches in his office just because some criminal was trying to get even with him.

 

He’d been so good at hiding his fear that, had that spider not climbed on top of the only fly swatter in his office while he and Sonny were going over tomorrow’s testimony, thus rendering him helpless to do nothing but wait for it to move, he's not sure anyone would've ever figured it out. 

 

“Here,” Sonny said, getting up and squashing it with a kleenex then tossing both in the garbage bin.

 

“Thank you,” Barba said, very much relieved. Then, remembering himself, “I would've gotten it.”

 

“It's no big deal. Anyways, I've known a lot of people over the years who are afraid of bugs, so I'm used to doin’ this. Your secret is safe with me,” he added with a grin.

 

True to his word, Sonny never told anyone, and from that point on if they were in the same room together he would take it upon himself to nonchalantly dispose of any creepy crawlies hanging, or flying, around. 

 

After they began dating he joked to Barba that the ADA was only pursuing him so that his extermination services would be more readily available to him, and maybe he should start charging for it.

 

“And what do you think you'd get for it?” Barba teased, carding his fingers through Sonny's hair as the man rested his head in his lap. “A cookie?”

 

Sonny grinned up at him. “How about a kiss?”

 

“Hmmm.” He pretended to consider it. “You'll have to cash in on them in private.”

 

“Of course,” Sonny said. “Wouldn't want anyone else getting any ideas and trying to corner my market.”

 

“Then I find those terms agreeable.”

 

And they were agreeable, though at one point, a few years down the road, Barba pointed out that he'd probably overpaid him enough to provide his bug killing services for the remainder of their days on Earth.

 

“Oh no,” Sonny said quickly, shaking his head with mock seriousness. “The homeless man we just arrested clearly warned us that the end is coming, and when it does there's going to be plagues of locusts.”

 

“Plagues...of locusts.”

 

“Uh-huh!”

 

“You're going to single-handedly kill an entire plague of locusts for me?”

 

“Not if I don't get at least half of the payment up front. And that could take, at the rate we've been going,” Sonny wiggled his fingers and looked up at the ceiling, pretending to count. “At least twenty more years.”

 

“Hm, that does sound serious,” Barba said, stepping closer. “Perhaps it's better to err on the side of caution.”

 

“Better safe than sorry,” Sonny agreed, trying, and failing, to keep his face straight. 

 

Barba grinned back at him.

  
“Well I'd better get started then,” he said, and closed the gap between them.


End file.
